Bronze ornaments of the Nordic Bronze Age (neck collars, belt plates, pins and tutuli) were elaborate objects that served as status symbols to communicate social hierarchy. The magnificent metalwork studied here dates from 1500-1100 BC. An interdisciplinary investigation of the artefacts was adopted to elucidate their manufacture and origin, resulting in new insights into metal craft in northern Europe during the Bronze Age. Based on the habitus concept, which situates the craftsmen within their social and technological framework, individual artefact characteristics and metalworking techniques can be used to identify different craft practices, even to identify individual craftsmen. The conclusions drawn from this offer new insights into the complex organisation of metalcraft in the production of prestige goods across different workshops. Several kinship-based workshops on Jutland, in the Lüneburg Heath and Mecklenburg, allow us to conclude that the bronze objects were a display of social status and hierarchy controlled by, and produced for, the elite – as is also seen in the workshops on Zealand. Within the two main metalworking regions, Zealand and central Lower Saxony, workshops can be defined as communities of practice that existed with an extended market and relations with the local elite. Attached craft, in the sense that the craftspeople fully depended on a governing institution and produced artefacts as a manifestation of political expression, was only detected on Zealand between 1500-1300 BC.

The investigation presented here showed that overall results could not be achieved when concentrating only on one aspect of metalwork. Highly skilled craft is to be found in every kind of workshop, as well as an intensive labour input. Only when considering skill in relation to labour input and also taking into account signs of apprenticeship and cross-craft techniques, as well as the different categories of mistakes in crafting, can a stable image of craft organisation be created.

About the Author
HEIDE W. NØRGAARD is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, where she graduated and received her PhD in 2014. With the background as an educated goldsmith, she is working with metal artefacts trying to solve craft technical problems from the Bronze to the early Iron Ages in Northern Europe. Heide W. Nørgaard is currently working on reconstructing the earliest metal trading routes towards Scandinavia, based on over 500 lead isotope analysis of the first half of the 2nd millennium BC.

These objects do not have a single purpose. This is the central premise that guides the research within this book. Throughout the volume the reader will follow a representation of a marine hunter-gatherer society, a projection deriving from one of its iconic and most important material assets, the harpoon. This very technical object will be studied not only for its most evident function - hunting at sea – and the work delves into the structural, symbolic, technological and world-building aspects of the human societies that used them. To achieve this goal the text begins with a judgment about the role of marine hunting, its prey, and the agents involved in different coastal societies on the American continent, in order to create a comprehensive framework of reference for the subject. It continues by focussing on clarifying, defining and discussing the concept of harponage from technology compared with other historical and ethnographic cases of marine hunters across the globe. A typology of harpoon points from the Atacama Desert is presented, with classification based on their technical attributes, constituent units, composition features and articulation mechanisms, in order to evaluate the chronological scope and geographical distribution of each one of the types of harpoon heads from the last 7000 years of coastal history. The text then explores the multiple values and meanings of the harpoons of the Atacama Desert. The book finally examines the social reasons that influenced the development of an incredibly sophisticated and complex technology of marine hunting. Inferences that take it out of the sea and away from hunting, towards hypotheses that seek answers in the cultural determinism stemming from technical decisions, to utilise technology as another mechanism to establish and strengthen social bonds in the construction of worlds between different agents and collectives, and no longer as a simple tool to satisfy subsistence needs.

The Affect of Crafting presents an interrogation of materiality and crafting, a consideration of the situatedness of the technological practice of crafting itself, and the forms of relationships that exist between all things transformed in the act of crafting: bodies, minerals and landscapes. Linked to those transformations, this volume presents an argument for cultural resonance as a manner through which to understand the resilience and repetition of certain styles and forms of copper arrowheads across the region during the third millennium BCE. Morphological consistency is theorized as producing affective responses that engender belonging: one belongs with and through things.

About the Author
UZMA Z. RIZVI is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies, Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. She is also Visiting Researcher at the American University of Sharjah.

Colourless glass became prominent between the middle of the 1st century AD and the beginning of the 4th century. This book reflects the diversity of glass and is designed as a practical manual divided into three parts: Assemblages, Typological Catalogue, Chemical Analyses.

The first presents contexts in which colourless glass has been found; the second, in the form of index cards, is a typological catalogue which gives an overall picture of the colourless glassware found throughout Gaul; glass is highly useful as a dating tool but also tells us much about the economic, social and cultural aspects of its time. Chemical analyses form the third component.

The volume of material gathered in this book makes it an indispensable working tool for researchers and students interested in the glassware of Roman antiquity.

A collective work by multiple scholars, this book results from an investigation initiated and mainly supported by the French Association for Glass Archaeology (Association française pour l’Archéologie du Verre) to which most of the authors belong as well as being attached to various research institutions.

Creativity is embedded in human history. Indeed, it is impossible to understand material change and the development of the new without invoking creativity. The location, exploration and analysis of creativity should therefore be of particular concern to archaeologists. This volume engages with this challenge by focusing on the outcomes of creativity – material culture – and an exploration of creative practice. The European Bronze Age provides a useful focus for discussions of the outcomes of creativity because in this period we see the development of new and pre-existing materials that we take for granted today, in particular textiles and bronze. We also see new ways of working with existing materials, such as clay, to create novel forms. In both new and existing materials it is frequently possible to see the growth of technical skill, to produce complex forms and elaborate decorated surfaces.

The papers in this volume view Bronze Age objects through the lens of creativity in order to offer fresh insights into the interaction between people and the world, as well as the individual and cultural processes that lie behind creative expression. Many have their origin in the international conference Creativity: An Exploration Through the Bronze Age and Contemporary Responses to the Bronze Age held at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge in 2103 as part of the HERA-funded project Creativity and Craft Production in Middle and Late Bronze Age Europe. Contributions span the early to late Bronze Age, deal with a range of materials including textiles, metal, and ceramics, and reflect on data from across the continent including Iberia, Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe. This breadth illustrates the wideranging importance and applicability of creativity as an heuristic concept. The volume further develops a range of theoretical and methodological directions, opening up new avenues for the study of creativity in the past.

Glassware and Glassworking in Thessaloniki: 1st Century BC – 6th Century AD is a detailed examination of the production of glass and glass vessels in the eastern Mediterranean from the Hellenistic Age to the Early Christian period, analysing production techniques and decoration. The volume establishes the socio-economic framework of glassmaking and glassmakers’ social status in the Roman world generally and in Thessaloniki specifically, while identifying probable local products. Presented are all the excavation glass finds from Thessaloniki and its environs found between 1912 and 2002. A typological classification was created for almost 800 objects – which encompass the overwhelming majority of common excavation finds in the Balkans – as well as for the decorative themes that appear on the more valuable pieces. Comparative material from the entire Mediterranean was studied, verified in its entirety through primary publications. A summary of the excavation history of these vessels’ find-spots is provided, with details for each excavation, in many cases unpublished and identified through research in the archives of the relevant museums and Ephorates of Antiquities. The uses of glass vessels are presented, and there is discussion and interpretation of the reasons that permitted, or imposed, the choice of glass for their production. The finds are statistically analysed, and a chronological overview examining them century by century on the basis of use and place of production is given. Finally, there is an effort to interpret the data from the study in historical terms, and to incorporate the results into the political-economic evolution of the region’s political history. Relatively unfamiliar glassmaking terms are explained in a glossary of glassworking technology and typology terms. The material is fully documented in drawings and photographs, and every object in the catalogue is illustrated. A detailed index of the 602 geographical terms in the work, many unknown, concludes the book.

About the Author:Anastassios C. Antonaras, a specialist in the history of glass, jewellery and textiles, is an archaeologist and curator at the Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki. His books include: Glassworking, Ancient and Medieval: Terminology, Technology and Typology; A Greek- English-English-Greek Dictionary; Roman and Early Christian Glassworking: Vessels from Thessaloniki and its Region (which received a prize from the Academy of Athens in 2010); Fire and Sand: Ancient Glass in the Princeton University Art Museum; and Artisanal Production in Ancient and Byzantine Thessaloniki: Archaeological, Literary and Epigraphic Evidence. Antonaras has organized numerous exhibitions and symposia, and has published numerous articles on objects from Thessaloniki. He currently serves on the board of the Christian Archaeological Association and is the secretary general of the International Association for the History of Glass.

The Nordic Bronze Age Symposium began modestly in 1977 with 13 participants, and has now expanded to over 120 participants: a tenfold increase that reflects the expanding role of Bronze Age research in Scandinavia, not least amongst younger researchers. From having taken a back seat in the 1970s, it is now in the driver’s seat in terms of expanding research themes, publications and international impact.

This collection of articles helps to explain why the Bronze Age has come to hold such a fascination within modern archaeological research. By providing new theoretical and analytical perspectives on the evidence new interpretative avenues have opened, it situates the history of the Bronze Age in both a local and a global setting.

About the Editors:Sophie Bergerbrant completed her doctoral thesis in archaeology in 2007 at the University of Stockholm. She currently leads the research project Bronze Age wool economy: production, trade, environment, husbandry and society at the department of historical studies, University of Gothenburg.

Anna Wessman is currently a PhD candidate at the department of historical studies, University of Gothenburg. Her PhD project focuses on south Scandinavian rock art, with a special focus on regional features and styles in relation to time and change.

It is commonly recognized that the Cedars of Lebanon were prized in the ancient world, but how can the complex archaeological role of the Cedrus genus be articulated in terms that go beyond its interactions with humans alone? And to what extent can ancient ships and boats made of this material demonstrate such intimate relations with wood? Drawing from object-oriented ontologies and other ‘new materialisms,’ Cedar Forests, Cedar Ships constructs a hylocentric anti-narrative spreading from the Cretaceous to the contemporary. With a dual focus on the woods and the watercraft, and on the considerable historical overlap between them, the book takes another step in the direction of challenging the conceptual binaries of nature/culture and subject/object, while providing an up-to-date synthesis of the relevant archaeological and historical data.

Binding physical properties and metaphorical manifestations, the fluctuating presence of cedar (forests, trees, and wood) in religious thought is interpreted as having had a direct bearing on shipbuilding in the ancient East Mediterranean. Close and diachronic excavations of the interstices of allure, lore, and metaphor can begin to navigate the (meta) physical relationships between the forested mountain and the forest afloat, and their myriad unique realities.

Reviews

'The bulk of this study is devoted to assembling a wide array of information from disparate disciplines, which is a great service to the academic community, and this monograph will undoubtedly be a useful reference for years to come.' - Marcus Ziemann, The Ohio State University (Bryn Mawr Classical Review) Full review here: http://www.bmcreview.org/2018/06/20180638.html

'This is a complex and compelling account that ranges widely across genres and ideas in pursuit—or perhaps more appropriately, under the spell—of cedar forests and the objects hewn from their wood.' - Robert Witcher, Durham University (Antiquity, 2017)

Studies of Iron Age artefacts from Britain tend to be dominated either by the study of metalwork, or pottery. This book presents a study not only of a different material, but also a different type of object: glass beads. These are found in a range of different sizes, shapes, colours, and employ a variety of different decorative motifs.

Through an analysis of glass beads from four key study regions in Britain, the book aims not only to address regional differences in appearance and chronology, but also to explore the role that this object played within the networks and relationships that constructed Iron Age society. It seeks to understand how they were used during their lives and how they came to be deposited within the archaeological record, in order to establish the social processes that glass beads were bound within.

The results indicate that glass beads were a strongly regionalised artefact, potentially reflecting differing local preferences for colour and motif. In addition, glass beads, in combination with several other types of object, were integral to Middle Iron Age dress. Given that the first century BC is often seen as a turning point in terms of settlements and material culture, this supports the possibility of strong continental exchange during an earlier period for either glass beads or raw materials. However, by the Late Iron Age in the first century BC and early first century AD, their use had severely diminished.

The volume – in Italian, with an English summary – illustrates the Popolani Collection, that was donated to the Archaeological Museum of Florence by Carlo Popolani, a physician who lived in Damascus in the early 20th century. The collection consists of ancient pottery vessels, terracotta oil-lamps, glazed Islamic tiles, Romano-Byzantine glassware, as well as various objects from the Damascene antique market. In particular, the rich group of glazed tiles is very representative of the typical Mamluk and Ottoman production that flourished in Damascus between the XV and XVIII century.

This report presents the vessel glass and small finds found during the excavations between 1995 and 2006 that took place in Insula VI.1, Pompeii (henceforth VI.1). More than 5,000 items are discussed, and the size of the assemblage has meant that the publication is in two parts. The book you are reading consists of the discussion with associated illustrations and the catalogue entries for a subset of the data. The other half is available digitally on the Archaeological Data Service. That part contains the full catalogue of the material recorded, additional contextual information, and details about the initial excavations of the insula during the eighteenth century.

The transfer, in 1981, of the town Museum collections in Sens (Yonne) to the old Archbishop’s palace required great discretion and an underground passage was planned between the two buildings. Preventive archaeological excavations unearthed 22 Gallo-Roman bone combs, as well as a further 17 pieces when the excavation area was expanded.

This exceptional concentration of bone artefacts incited the author to start on an experimental search at a time when bone artefacts were not finding much interest among specialists. However, it was extremely adventurous to piece together a bone-worker production line and create a never before archaeologically discovered appliance used in Roman times.

Obviously, the first reproductions have been directed towards combs. Those replicas pointed towards the material constraints, but also defined the constructions of necessary tools to take slabs off and conceive objects.

Moreover, matrix origin – small sized compact bone – explained why bone workers used to juxtapose elements to get suitable surfaces. Various complications during free hand denture sawing led them to perfect another operating system, plausible and more reliable.

Logical follow up would have been to extend experimental investigations, perhaps not to all the bone artefacts, but to a typical class of them, in order to complete the reconstructions of the equipment and suggest a general bone worker’s workshop arrangement.

This book presents a collection of papers from the Symposium on Cultural Dynamics and Production Activities in Ancient Western Mexico, held at the Center for Archaeological Research of the Colegio de Michoacán on September 18-19, 2014. While these thought-provoking essays on key topics in Western Mexican archaeology will spark debate among scholars interested in this cultural area, they will also be of interest to students of ancient Mesoamerica as a whole. The time is ripe for insightful discussions and new syntheses of archaeological research in Western Mesoamerica, and this volume represents, undoubtedly, a valuable contribution to this urgent task.

These papers are grouped into three thematic areas. The first, Cultural dynamics in Western Mexico, includes essays on: The challenges of archaeology in flood-prone areas; Exploitation of local resources and imported products; Settlement systems of the Tarascan state; and Stone tools as indicators of task specialization. The second section, Production of strategic resources, analyzes the following topics: The obsidian jewelry of the Teuchitlán Tradition; Differing obsidian economies in Teuchitlán culture; Source areas and obsidian exploitation in Michoacán; The history of pottery production in Capula, Michoacán; Ethnoarchaeology of Tarascan pottery: domestic production and decoration styles; Ceramics, social status, and the Tarascan state economy; and Copper as a strategic resource in pre-Hispanic Western Mexico; while part three focuses on Trade and exchange: Circulation of goods and communication routes between Western and Central Mexico; Contrasting models of ceramic production in the Tarascan state; and Ceramic evidence of contact between Teotihuacan, the Bajío, and southern Hidalgo.

This is the first dedicated and comprehensive study of glass beads from Early Medieval Ireland, presenting the first national classification, typology, dating, symbology and social performance of glass beads.

Glass beads are one of the most visually stunning archaeological objects and they remain as popular a part of body ornament today as in the past. This continuing fascination is explained somewhat by the versatility of glass which can be rendered opaque or transparent and produced in a variety of colours. Glass has an almost mesmerising effect in its ability to reflect light, presenting not just a surface but also dimensional depths of shade and light. In this respect the crafting of glass beads as representations of the human eye may go some way towards explaining their enduring and universal popularity.

Glass beads however are much more than this and their enduring appeal is also a reflection of their aesthetic and symbolic qualities. This book explores not only the importance of beads as a tool of archaeological research but also the relevance of beads in the social arena and their significance as markers of cultural and religious identity and symbols of status and age both in Ireland and further afield.

This volume is focused on the cataloguing of glass conserved in the Archaeological Museum of Tripoli. This is so far an unpublished corpus of objects identified from investigations into the necropolis and other burials in Tripoli and its suburbs, in conjunction with the activities of the Italian Government in Libya during the first twenty years of the last century. The main objective of the work is filling the gaps in the state of knowledge concerning the production of glass of the North-African area by providing as complete as possible a documentation on the findings from Oea and its territory.

The earliest finds of wheeled vehicles in northern and central Europe date to 3900-3600 BC. However finds (3400–3300 BC) from the Boleráz sites of Arbon/Bleiche 3 and Bad Buchau/Torwiesen II, linked to pile-dwelling settlements, indicate methods of transport typical for higher altitudes (slides, sleds, etc.). The Boleráz and Baden cultures overlap in the Carpathian Basin between 3300–3000 BC and this period seems to have produced transport models that parallel finds in today’s Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and other regions. These suggest that generally the Boleráz settlers inside the Carpathian Basin did not know, or use, the wheel in the fullest sense. Cart and wheel forms are indicated only from Grave 177 at Budakalász (2800–2600 BC). The Hungarian Baden finds follow the Danube and to the East there are no certain vehicle remains. It is difficult to tell whether the Boleráz finds are linked to the wider Alpine zone, and the Baden finds are perhaps associated with the mixed-culture sites along the eastern slopes of the Carpathians. The four-wheeled wagon was a development linked to the plains and the Steppes (Cucuteni–Tripolje, Pre-Yamnaja, Yamnaja). The nature of the finds relating to vehicles associated with lake and riverine settlements reveal technical and material features: there is evidence of a high degree of carving, if not decoration, and these communities pointed the way for future skills and developments in wheel and cart/wagon manufacture.

Access Archaeology:Our newest imprint is designed to make archaeological research accessible to all and to present a low-cost (or no-cost) publishing solution for academics from all over the world. Material will range from theses, conference proceedings, catalogues of archaeological material, excavation reports and beyond. We will provide type-setting guidance and templates for authors to prepare material themselves designed to be made available for free online via our Open Access platform and to supply in-print to libraries and academics worldwide at a reasonable price point. Click here to learn more about publishing in Access Archaeology.

The invention of the wheel is often highlighted as one of humankinds’ most significant inventions. Wheels do not exist in nature, and so can be viewed entirely as a human-inspired invention. Machinery too, was relatively rare in the ancient world. The potter’s wheel is arguably the most significant machine introduced into Egypt, second only perhaps to the drill, the loom and the bellows for smelting metal. In Predynastic Egypt (c3500 B.C.), the traditional methods of hand-building pottery vessels were already successful in producing pottery vessels of high quality on a large scale for the domestic market, so it would seem that the potter’s wheel was a rather superfluous invention. However, the impact of this innovation would not just have affected the Egyptian potters themselves learning a new skill, but also signalled the beginnings of a more complex and technologically advanced society.

Despite many years work on the technology of pottery production it is perhaps surprising that the origins of the potter’s wheel in Egypt have yet to be determined. This present project seeks to rectify this situation by determining when the potter’s wheel was introduced into Egypt, establishing in what contexts wheel thrown pottery occurs, and considering the reasons why the Egyptians introduced the wheel when a well-established hand making pottery industry already existed.

'While addressing the intricacies of ceramic research, Doherty succeeds in making an often complex subject accessible to the reader, drawing together archaeological, epigraphic and scientific evidence to address the challenges inherent in such a study... The volume is richly illustrated with accompanying images and statistical data, and a comprehensive bibliography will be of considerable use to those interested in furthering their knowledge of this fascinating area of research.' - Anna Garnett (Ancient Egypt Magazine, February/March 2016)

A detailed scientific and conservation record of a group of ivory and bone furniture overlays excavated at Begram, stolen from the National Museum of Afghanistan, privately acquired on behalf of Kabul, analysed and conserved at the British Museum and returned to the National Museum of Afghanistan in 2012

The “Begram ivories” are widely considered to be miniature masterpieces of Indian art and are one of the largest archaeological collections of ancient ivories. They were excavated at the site of Begram, in northern Afghanistan, in 1937 and 1939 and belong to a period when Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India were united under rulers of the Kushan dynasty. Divided soon afterwards between the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul and the Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet in Paris, the collection in Kabul suffered a disaster during the civil war which ravaged the country during the early 1990s. Some of the pieces were successfully concealed by museum staff but most were stolen, hundreds have since been reported in different collections and very few have yet been recovered.
In 2011 a group of twenty bone and ivory plaques was generously acquired for the National Museum of Afghanistan by a private individual. These were scientifically analysed, conserved and exhibited at the British Museum and returned to Kabul in 2012. This book describes their story from excavation to display and return, with individual object biographies and detailed scientific analyses and conservation treatments. It also discusses how these objects have attracted very different interpretations over the decades since their discovery, and how the new analyses shed a completely fresh light on the collection. It is lavishly illustrated in full colour, and includes many previously unpublished views of the objects when they were originally exhibited in Kabul.
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the archaeology of Afghanistan, Indian art, polychromy, museum studies, object biographies or the history of conservation.